Chunk your goals and get them done

Goal Chunking “Goals are dreams with deadlines”

Quote by Diana Scharf Hunt Some of us have general ideas and concepts; we see “The Big Picture” but do not get into the details. For others we get bogged down “In the Details” and lose the big picture. This is why sometimes we have problems meeting our goals.

A simple way to begin accomplishing goals is to apply a process called “Chunking.”. Chunking is a principle that applies to the effective communication of information. In the 1950s Harvard psychologist George A. Miller published a landmark journal article entitled "The Magical Number Seven, plus or minus two." Miller studied the short term memory. For example, how many numbers people could be reliably expected to remember a few minutes after having been told these numbers only once? The answer was: "The Magical Number Seven, plus or Minus Two".

Research suggests that human beings can understand and remember no more than seven plus or minus two items of information at a time. Think about your phone number. It is not an accident it is only 7 digits.

We know many of us have a lot more than “7 plus or minus two” goals. Take annual sales goals usually it has many outcomes for instance:

Total sales Quota Commission Products development Marketing Appointments Proposals The list a few the list can be overwhelming, but not if we apply the chunking process.

So let’s begin working on achieving your goals.

Annual Goal Planning The first step is to determine your annual goals.

You will need to list each goal and be specific. For example “Increase wins” does not let you know what exactly you will achieve, or more importantly “How will you know when you achieve it?”

Remember “Measurement eliminates argument.” Be specific for example replace “increase wins” with “Sign 100 new customers.”

After listing all of your goals with specifics, now you must decide which ones are the most important.

This is done by assigning a priority next to each goal. You can have multiple number ones, twos and threes, so determine a priority using one of following categories.

1- high 2- medium 3- low Let’s review where we are:

You developed a list of annual goals with specifics.

You decided which ones were most important to the least important.

The next step is to determine which of the number ones is the most important to the least important.

This is done by assigning the letter A next to the most important, B to second most important and continue to do this until you have completed your number 1 list.

Congratulations! You now have your most important goals completed. Now it is on to the next step.

Take your number 1 A goal and divide it into 90 day specifics. For example; let’s take our goal of “Sign 100 customers” and determine the 90 day goal of:

15 new customers Quarter 1 25 new customers Quarter 2 45 new customers Quarter 3 15 new customers Quarter 4 Note in this example I did not take 100 and divide by 4 making it 25 a quarter because reality must be considered. Think about your market. Are there seasonality trends? Do your prospects or customers buy in certain months?

Now take your 90 goals and divide into monthly goals. Using our example from above it may be in quarter 1, again developing a realistic goal, it would look like this:

3 new customers Month 1 5 new customers Month 2 7 new customers Month 3

O.K. so far so good. Now here is what you do next:

What are the 5 to 7 tasks I need to do today to accomplish signing 3 new customers this month?

Write this down in your planner and then get it done.

If it is not done today, transfer to the next day until it is accomplished.

Your focus is placed in the most important thing you can do today to accomplish your goal.

Congratulations! You are on your way to tuning goals into accomplishments!

What does the sales funnel and accomplishing goals have to do with one another? Take a look at the diagram on the next page you will see that you already know how to do this. It is just presented in a different way.

Here is wishing you much success, Rich

Chunk your goals and get them done - To learn more about this author, visit Rich Grehalva's Website.

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